


and you breathe it in

by goinghost



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Buddy Aurinko: Ultimate Matchmaker, Fluff, Getting Together, Idiots in Love, Mutual Pining, Other, Pining, i realize i never clarified that, they're in their early/mid 20s in this one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:09:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26801179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goinghost/pseuds/goinghost
Summary: If you had told Peter Nureyev six months ago that he would find fulfillment in a job where he regularly saw and interacted with children for six hours every shift, he would immediately assume he was being dragged into some kind of sting operation that no one had informed him about. Yet it had been six entire months since he’d begun working the front desk at Buddy Aurinko’s Swim School and it may have been one of the best jobs of his life.--Peter pines. Juno learns. There is a not-insignificant amount of swimming involved.
Relationships: Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel
Comments: 24
Kudos: 81





	and you breathe it in

**Author's Note:**

> back at it again with another incredibly self indulgent au that i haven't been able to get out of my head: personal life experience edition! i worked as a swim instructor for kids for about a year and a half before the pandemic forced the school i worked at to close permanently and it was the best job i've ever had. i loved it! so i'm projecting that love onto everyone's favorite thief and detective (who are neither a thief nor a detective in this one). 
> 
> i would like to apologize for the not-insignificant portion of this fic that is dedicated to teaching actual freestyle technique. you can take the swim school away from the coach but you can't make the coach stop teaching people how to swim apparently. if you're confused, i suggest looking up a video of people swimming freestyle and comparing it to what nureyev and juno are saying. 
> 
> shoutout to jay for all the help he gave me in planning this and making my self indulgence into something postable and shoutout to my roommate levi for beta'ing! i really appreciate both of you! 
> 
> title from 'little death' by the beths, which is a much nicer song than it sounds 
> 
> no content warnings that i can think of besides very vague allusions to rough childhoods from both juno and nureyev. as always if you catch anything you think i should warn for, let me know in the comments!

If you had told Peter Nureyev six months ago that he would find fulfillment in a job where he regularly saw and interacted with children for six hours every shift, he would immediately assume he was being dragged into some kind of sting operation that no one had informed him about. Yet it had been six entire months since he’d begun working the front desk at Buddy Aurinko’s Swim School and it may have been one of the best jobs of his life. What was even more surprising was that he wasn’t even only tangentially interacting with children now, but actively had his own classes. Yes, he only had four students and they were all significantly older than the usual fare at BASS, but they were his little stars and he treasured his classes with them once every week. 

And, of course, there was another reason he found the job so satisfying. 

“Mistah Nureyev, how long are you gonna stand there starin’ at Mistah Steel, because we got Tabitha’s parents on the phone who’re trying to update their payment info and I could really use a second pair of hands to get kids checked in for the next class time!”

“Coming, Rita!” Peter called through the door to the pool deck. He quickly tore his eyes away from Juno Steel, the lady he found himself unable to stop thinking about since he’d begun working here. Juno had joined BASS as a coach a little over a month after Peter and yet he’d managed to captivate him completely in the time since. 

It was embarrassing, his obvious crush on the lady. Peter couldn’t tell you when it started but before he knew it, moments like what had just happened kept cropping up. He kept finding any excuse to be in the pool room while Juno was on shift, if only to watch the gentle way he handled the kids. Just one more thing that had changed since he’d started at BASS; if you’d told past-Peter that watching someone gently work with kids would be cause to find them attractive he’d have laughed in your face. 

He made his way into the main lobby, where the front desk sat. BASS was a small, local operation. There wasn’t all that much to the facility besides the reasonably-sized pool room and the large windows that allowed those in the main lobby to watch their children learn. There were some changing rooms off of the front desk area, and a very cramping staff room in the same hallway, and, of course, Buddy’s office in a room behind the front desk, but really that was all. They didn’t need a very large facility to do what they did. 

Rita looked as if she were juggling four tasks at once instead of her usual three. She definitely appeared frazzled but also loving every second of it, which was what Rita looked like on any given day on the job. She was usually full time at the front desk, but ran some of the older adults’ classes that BASS did once every two weeks, much like Peter and his little advanced swimming stars. 

“You’re just in time, Mistah Nureyev, little Olala here needs to get checked in and Tabby’s parents are still on the line!” Rita said, gesturing to a brown-haired girl that had been coming here for the past two weeks that Peter recognized but couldn’t think of a last name for. 

Peter smiled as best as he could at the little girl and handed her a colored bracelet that indicated which lane of the pool she should be going to for her afternoon class. Mildly, and with a completely normal amount of interest, he registered that she was in Juno’s next class. The only reason that was noteworthy, he told himself, was because she was older than the kids in Juno’s classes typically were. He and Buddy herself usually took on the 2-5 age range, while Vespa and Jet (the other full time coaches) handled the 6-10 year olds. Olala’s birthday listed in the system when Peter checked her in said that she was 7 years old. It was just out of the ordinary for Juno, that was all. 

There was no other reason that Peter cared that she was in Juno’s class. None whatsoever. 

Olala took her bracelet proudly, with barely any hint of shyness that usually accompanied newer kids. She seemed to be very outspoken, which was nice, but wasn’t very predictive of how she’d do in the water. Peter had seen the most boisterous kids turn tail and run when confronted with the fact that they’d need to be floating on their own eventually. 

Rita finished up her phone call and they both got the rest of the kids for this class time slot checked in. Rita rattled off their names and asked about their school days like she always did. Peter had no idea how she’d managed to memorize so many kids’ names and personal lives, but if she wanted the majority of the interaction with the children of BASS then he wasn’t going to complain. 

Once the kids were all let into the pool room and class for this half hour started in earnest, Peter looked around for something to do that wouldn’t involve playing phone tag with the various parents that were constantly calling. 

Rita saw him poking around the desk and sighed, “Y’know, we ain’t cleaned the windows on the pool deck in days.”

“What was that?” He asked, looking up.

“The windows on the pool deck are all dirty. You might as well clean ‘em if you’re gonna be lookin’ out at Mistah Steel all forlornly like that.”

Peter blinked, “I don’t—”

But Rita just shook her head, “It’s okay, Mistah Nureyev, I won’t say anything. But you really oughta think about doing your job sometime soon. We’re _supposed_ to be answering the phones, not cleaning windows.” She tilted her head as if to consider something, “Okay, well sometimes Buddy makes us clean windows, but _usually_ we’re answering phones!” 

Peter just nodded and moved around the desk to get to the small closet that held all of the cleaning supplies necessary to run a business full of little germ machines. He took out the small squeegee they used for the windows and a spray bottle of Windex, trying to explain to himself that he was simply bored of the phones and was _not_ doing this simply to see Juno in his element. 

Peter was fairly adept at lying to himself but even that was a stretch. 

He started with the windows furthest from Juno’s lane, just to prove whatever he was trying to prove to himself. That he wasn’t hopelessly gone for the lady, he supposed. There were two sets of windows, one strip that ran along the front of the pool deck and let the parents watch their children, and one that ran behind the pool that let sunlight in from outside. The windows at the back of the pool deck were separated from the pool only by a thin strip of the speckled concrete material that made up the entire pool room. He would do those last. 

Peter zipped through the first few windows, giving nods to each of the coaches as he passed by their lane. When he came to Juno’s he chanced a confident wave, but Juno appeared to be too deeply invested in helping Olala float on her front as she clung to him to notice. 

Next came the back windows, which would allow him to get much closer to Juno’s lane than he maybe should, for the sake of his dignity. He moved past the windows by the other coaches’ lanes and was walking forward to clean the one closest to Juno when he heard it. 

_“Meet me by the river, where the elderberries grow…”_

Juno was _singing._ He had Olala floating on her back, gently holding her by the back of her neck as he slowly began taking his hand away finger by finger, and he was _singing_ to her. Nureyev had seen this happen before, whenever there was a child who was timid or too scared of the water to float on their own. Usually it was Jet’s baritone that chose to sing, however. He’d never heard Juno employ this method of calming a child down. 

Peter was so caught up in the fact that he was hearing _Juno Steel sing_ that he didn’t notice the pile of pool toys he practically walked into and stumbled, his feet catching on some water that had collected and sliding out from under him. Before he knew it, he’d fallen into the pool right into Juno’s lane. 

It was, perhaps, the single most embarrassing thing that had ever happened to him while working at Buddy Aurinko’s Swim School. Nureyev very deeply hoped it would be the last. 

* * *

After the _incident_ as Buddy had called it, Nureyev was banned from entering the pool room for the rest of his shift. Instead, he “did his job” as Rita had put it, and answered the phone calls of belligerent parents until they closed down at seven o’clock. 

Buddy called a staff meeting, as she usually did when they finished the last shift of the day. It was nothing out of the ordinary, or so Peter had thought. He’d barely been paying attention considering all this information would be posted to the Slack that the BASS staff shared, when he’d all but snapped to attention. 

Buddy was going over the next “semester’s” classes when she said, “And Juno, it really is about time that you take over some of the advanced classes. We’ll need to teach you the different strokes. I’m sure Pete would be happy to help walk you through them, considering he is the most experienced with them.”

“Hmm?” He said, at the same time that Juno began choking on the soda he’d been drinking. 

“You would be fine with going over the different strokes we teach with Juno, wouldn’t you, darling? I just assumed.” Buddy’s eyes were twinkling and Peter knew she knew exactly what she was doing. This woman would be the death of him. 

He tried to regain his footing, “Of course I would be. The more people who understand enough to admire my students’ progress the better.” 

He caught Vespa rolling her eyes but otherwise she made no comment. Jet was either incredibly dialed into the conversation or incredibly zoned out of it, Peter couldn’t tell. Juno appeared to still be coughing, and now Rita was enthusiastically slapping him on the back with heavy _thud_ s. 

Buddy clapped her hands lightly, “Excellent!” She said, “You can begin with freestyle and work your way up from there. You’ll just need to find a time where you’re both able to stay after your shift. I’ll let you coordinate that after the meeting.” 

“Wonderful,” Nureyev smiled, as composed as he could manage.

“Yeah,” Juno coughed one final time, “wonderful.”

They looked at each other for a moment. Now that Juno’s coughing fit was over he managed a smile and Peter smiled back. He really did have such a handsome face. Peter felt like he could get lost in his deep brown eyes forever. 

Then Vespa groaned and said, “Oh, barf.” And the moment was ruined. 

Buddy continued to outline what they would need to work on in the future and in no time the meeting was adjourned. Peter began packing his swimsuit and towel into the backpack he always brought to work when he heard someone clear their throat next to him. He looked up to see Juno rubbing a hand on the back of his neck. 

“Hey, Nureyev,” he smiled crookedly, “Buddy said we needed to figure out a day you could teach me freestyle.”

Peter straightened up and tried to appear suave, “Yes, well, we need a day where we’re both able to stay after hours. I’m sure you’re quite busy usually but—”

“Oh, I’m not busy,” Juno said quickly. Then he seemed to cringe, “I just mean, I don’t have a lot going on. I have to pick up my brother from dance practice on Mondays, but other than that I can stay out as late as we need.” 

“Excellent, how does tomorrow sound?” Nureyev did his best not to sound too eager. 

Juno nodded, “Yeah, sounds good.”

He looked like he was about to say more, but before he could get it out, Rita came up behind him and began dragging him out the door by the arm, “Mistah Steel, you promised you’d get me Mcdonald’s today! C’mon, they just got spicy nuggets!”

“Alright, I’m coming,” Juno grumbled, but he allowed Rita to pull him through the door, “Duty calls!” He yelled back at Peter as Rita continued regaling him with her Mcdonald’s order.

Peter smiled to himself softly as he watched Juno and Rita get into Juno’s beat up white truck. Peter was almost sure that car couldn’t be from this decade, maybe even this century, but it managed to cart Juno and Rita back to wherever they lived after every shift so he didn’t need to question it. 

Peter himself had a pristine Honda Civic that he’d managed to buy off of Jet for a good price after a month of working at BASS despite Jet’s obvious dislike for him. The Civic, nicknamed the Ruby 7 by Jet for no obvious reason, was bright green, a modification he’d asked Jet about once to which he’d replied, “I did not paint her green.” And the conversation ended there. 

Once he’d gotten into the Ruby 7 he took a moment to breathe. Tomorrow he’d be teaching Juno freestyle, something that would involve a lot of him positioning Juno’s arms and face in close proximity. Peter wasn’t sure he was ready for whatever would happen. 

* * *

Tomorrow came and went without any more _incidents_. It was Thursday, which meant that Nureyev was actually in the water for part of his shift. He only had four students but they were each at separate time slots, so he was in and out of the pool room trying not to drip on the floor of the lobby for more than half the day. His advanced classes were an hour each and he treasured every moment of them. 

He had one student learning backstroke, two learning breaststroke, and one particularly talented girl learning butterfly. He was so proud of all of them, but especially the girl learning butterfly. Nureyev had been on the swim team in high school, and he swam butterfly so he had a special place in his heart for teaching it. 

Nothing noteworthy happened while he was in the water. Although, it might’ve been his imagination, but he's sure he caught Juno glancing at him more than once. Peter tried not to read a deeper meaning into it. Maybe he was nervous about the fact that they would be alone together for at least an hour or two that night. God knew Peter was. 

By the time the last class rolled around he’d managed to work himself up into a state, a state which he tried very hard to remove himself from. _File it away_ , he told himself, _don’t think about the close proximity you are about to be in with Juno Steel. There is no need for nerves when this will be a simple lesson. You’ve taught these skills before. The only difference is how you feel about who you’re teaching. Barely relevant information._

Still, when Juno came into the pool room after passing off his keys to Rita (Nureyev would be giving Juno a ride, they’d decided that morning when Rita insisted she wasn’t going to wait for Juno to become a “freestyle master” when she could be watching Netflix in her room) Peter was working very hard to keep his fingers from shaking with the excess anxious energy coursing through his body. This was a perfectly normal excursion. There was nothing noteworthy about these circumstances and everything would go perfectly smoothly and Peter Nureyev could continue to admire Juno Steel from afar once all was said and done. 

At least, that is how he attempted to calm himself. 

Juno climbed into the pool and made his way over to the larger lane that Peter used for his classes. He pushed some water back and forth in an almost impatient gesture. “So,” he said, “What do we do first?” 

“We’ll start by covering your head and arm positioning.” Peter reached out and grabbed the wall of the pool with one hand, laying his head to the side with his ear on his outstretched shoulder. “Just like this.” 

Juno mimicked him as best as he could, but his chin was pointed too far up and he wasn’t balanced correctly. He wouldn’t be able to take a proper breath like that. 

Oh no, here was the moment he’d been afraid of. Touching Juno Steel. Telegraphing his movements, Nureyev reached out to readjust his chin and head slightly. “Like this,” he said, as his fingers ghosted over Juno’s skin. Juno had a strange expression on his face. Peter didn’t even want to begin to try to interpret it. He simply got Juno on the right track and clasped his hands together in the water to resist the urge to touch Juno any more than absolutely necessary. 

Juno cleared his throat, “Now what?”

“Now I’ll need you to turn your head towards the floor and then towards the windows on the far side of the pool deck, breathing when your mouth comes out of the water when you look to the side.” 

Juno did what he asked a few times in rapid succession, but again his chin came too far out and he wasn’t on his side properly, “Like this?” 

“Not insomuch,” Peter said, “Keep your ear on your shoulder when you’re turning. Here,” he brought his hand to the crown of Juno’s head and gently turned it so that he was staring at the windows sideways, “Turn it at that angle. You want to keep your chin down.” He tried very hard to keep the slight waver out of his voice at the contact. 

“Oh,” Juno gulped, “Right.” 

They went through those motions a few more times, Juno practicing breathing on his side and Nureyev practicing breathing through his nose to quell the tension in his body. At one point he had to adjust Juno’s head a final time and his fingertips burned where they moved across Juno’s chin and felt the scratch of stubble there. This was quickly becoming a nightmare. He needed to do something to get this situation back under his control. 

So he clasped his hands and said, “Well, it seems as if you have the motions mastered. The rest of the stroke is simply moving your arms and remembering to kick. Would you like to try it?”

“What, just like that?” Juno asked. 

“Yes, just like that. Just remember to breathe on your side after every other arm pull and you’ll be fine.” 

Juno looked at him strangely, but shook his shoulders out and set his head on his arm, “I guess I’ll just go for it then.”

“Quite.” 

When Juno pushed off the wall and began swimming, it wasn’t necessarily the unmitigated disaster Nureyev had been worried it would become. He kept forgetting to breathe and his kicks were sporadic at best, but overall it was a fantastic first try. 

Like with the children he usually taught, he found himself shouting at Juno to, “Kick! Kick your feet!” As he made his way down the lane. 

When Juno got to the other end, he groaned loudly from across the pool, “We get it, you want me to kick!”

Peter felt himself blushing, “Apologies, that’s usually how I do it with my students.” 

But Juno was chuckling, “Don’t worry, I do the same thing.” He shrugged awkwardly, “So, uh, how’d I do?”

“Well,” Peter said, “There is the matter of your kicking. And you clearly kept forgetting to breathe. But other than that I’d say you did well for your first time trying out freestyle.” 

Juno smiled, “Cool. So again? This time I’ll actually do the damn stroke.”

“Yes, again,” Peter chuckled. 

They went on like that for an hour, Juno getting better with each attempt until he really had all but mastered it. At one point Buddy entered the pool room to say that she was leaving and that Nureyev should lock up when they finally stopped. “You know where the keys are, darling!” She called over her shoulder as she flipped the lobby lights off. 

Once Buddy was out the door, Juno turned his heaving chest towards Peter and said, “You know what I’ve always wanted to do in here with the place empty?” 

Peter could think of a few answers. None of them were appropriate. He settled on a simple, “Hmm?” 

In lieu of an answer, Juno clambered out of the pool and disappeared into the small room that housed all of the pool things they didn’t want the children to get into. Nureyev stayed in the water for a few moments, unsure if he was supposed to follow or not. 

He spent another minute standing around and making a fool of himself before Juno emerged. In his arms were two brightly-colored pool noodles and one of the large baskets of toys that they let the kids play with after each class. He approached the edge of the pool and tossed the noodles over Nureyev’s head into the water. Then Juno set the bucket of toys down with a wet _thump_ onto the speckled pool deck. “The kids all seem to love this stuff so much, I figured there’s gotta be something to it, right?” 

Peter felt an embarrassing laugh bubble out of him unbidden. So that’s what he’d wanted to do. Well if Juno Steel wanted to play with pool toys then who was Peter to deny him?

Without a word, he reached into the basket and pulled out a small rubber duck. Nureyev dunked it under water and filled it’s rubber belly up as much as he could before squirting Juno directly in the face with it. The noise the lady made in response warmed every inch of Nureyev’s heart. 

He quickly retaliated by grabbing one of the plastic balls from the basket and throwing it at Nureyev, but it was very light and so his trajectory was off. The ball went sailing past him and landed around where Juno had thrown the pool noodles. 

At the sight of Juno reaching into the basket for something more that he could unleash on Peter, he held up his hands and dropped the rubber duck, “Truce.” He said as the duck bobbed in the water. 

Juno eyed him suspiciously, “You just don’t want me to actually hit you with something.”

“Guilty as charged,” Peter laughed. 

“Fine,” Juno said, grumbling. He started taking little plastic statues of cartoon characters that the kids like to watch sink from the basket. He appeared to be looking for something. “But don’t think this means you can get me while I’m down. I’m watching you.” 

Peter laughed again. He drifted towards the noodles and grabbed the bright green one. With practiced ease Peter sat on the noodle like it was a chair, floating over to the wall where Juno was still digging through the baskets. 

“Are you going to come back in the water?” He asked. 

Juno grunted, “Yeah, just a second.” With a sigh he overturned the basket onto the pool deck and started shifting through all of the toys. Finally, his hand closed around three rainbow-colored rings that they tossed and had the kids bring up from underwater. “Got ‘em.” 

Nureyev raised an eyebrow, “You want to do rings?”

“It looks fun!” Juno exclaimed defensively. As his voice echoed around the pool he seemed to realize how loud he’d been speaking, “Whatever. You can’t tell me you’ve never wanted to try it.”

After a second of internal debate over whether it would be prudent to lie, Peter just shrugged, “No, I suppose I can’t.” 

“That’s what I thought,” Juno scrambled into the pool, “How far should I toss ‘em?”

Peter tapped his chin, “Hm, what are the parameters here? Are you going to try to get them before they touch the ground or all in one breath?”

“Before they touch the ground. I’ve got shitty lungs.” 

“Then maybe halfway?”

Juno eyed him, “You have a lot more confidence in how fast I can swim than I do.” 

“Well,” Peter said, smiling, “You are a swim instructor.”

“Yeah, and I’ve got shitty lungs.” 

A few seconds later they settled on Juno tossing the rings out about eight feet and trying to grab them before they hit the ground. Nureyev acted as referee for a few rounds of this but after five minutes of Juno failing to grab all the rings, he grumpily handed them to Nureyev for him to try. Pete was a big enough person to admit that it was more fun than he’d expected. He’d never done anything like this as a child, didn’t really have the opportunity to. He hadn’t anticipated that he’d enjoy something so simple. 

They went on with the rings for twenty more minutes before they both grew tired and decided to float on the pool noodles. Peter kept his bright green one and Juno took the hot pink. They sat in them like chairs and bobbed up and down in the water next to each other. 

It was quiet for a few minutes, the only sound that could be heard was the water rippling as they shifted and swayed. It wasn’t awkward, as Peter had feared it would become. More...comfortable. Filled with a softness he hadn’t expected. It was nice. If this was all that his relationship with Juno Steel became, Peter thought that he would be satisfied with that. 

Eventually, Juno cleared his throat. “Thanks for teaching me,” he said, looking down into the water.

“It’s no trouble,” Peter moved his fingers back and forth under the ripples just to give himself something to do so that he didn’t do some impulsive, idiotic thing like grab Juno’s hand. “I quite liked it. You’re a fast learner.” 

Juno snorted, “Don’t give me too much credit. Maybe you’re just a good teacher.” 

“A bit of both, then,” Peter conceded. 

“Yeah…” Juno trailed off. “It’s weird. When I first started here, I never expected to want to do _more_ classes, but after working here for months and getting to know the kids...I don’t know. I want to give as many kids as I can something to look forward to.” 

Peter wasn’t sure what to say to that, so he made a noise to show he was listening and continued trying not to reach out to Juno. 

The lady continued as if Peter wasn’t there, “I never had anything like this growing up. All of my escapes would just get me into more trouble than they were worth. I I guess I could’ve done dance with my brother, but that’s always been his thing and I didn’t feel like messing that up for him.” Juno sighed, “I took this job because I needed a way to pay rent, but a small part of me wanted to—I don’t know, to make a difference. Even a small difference. To help give some kids a place where they could just be for a little bit. Make them look forward to swimming lessons every week if nothing else.” He gave a self-deprecating laugh, “That probably sounds stupid, considering it’s only half an hour once a week.” 

Peter drifted closer to Juno, telegraphing his movements as he stopped resisting the urge to touch him and reached out a hand to pull his chin so that he was looking Peter in the eye. “Juno, I don’t think that sounds stupid at all. In fact, I find it admirable.” He hesitated for a moment, unsure of how much he should say. Finally, he settled on, “I was also never given an opportunity like this as a child. And I think, if I had been like little Olala or any one of your other students and I’d had Coach Juno in my life during that time...it would’ve had a tremendous impact on my life. I think I would’ve been much happier. And obviously we can’t rewrite the past, but I think working to help others grow up with something like that...it’s beautiful.” Before he could stop himself, he said, “You’re beautiful, Juno Steel.” 

Juno didn’t seem to know what to say to that, and Peter couldn’t blame him. Before Juno had the chance to reject him, he groaned and rocked backwards in his noodle. “I’m so sorry. To use your word from earlier, I know it’s very stupid.” 

“What is?” Juno looked confused.

“My ridiculous crush on you,” Peter groaned again. He had no idea why he was sharing this other than the fact that Juno had just shared something personal with him and it felt like an eye for an eye situation. A deep-seated personal goal for a silly confession of a crush. Maybe one day he and Juno could be even. 

“What?”

“Yes, it’s quite silly.” He did his best to maintain a confident appearance, although internally he felt as if he were confessing more than just a crush. “Feel free to laugh.”

And Juno actually did start laughing, “You seriously have a crush on me?” 

Nureyev felt his confidence splintering, “Well, yes.”

“God,” Juno said. 

“I understand that it might be amusing but you really don’t have to—” But he was cut off by Juno’s mouth on his. 

Juno kissed him like he did all things: fiercely. He lunged forward, clasping an arm around the back of his shoulders, pulling him forward with enough force that Peter tumbled off of his pool noodle. Juno didn’t seem to mind, taking advantage of the opportunity to pull him even closer. Strong arms gripped Peter’s torso, while chapped lips slid against his own. Distantly, as his lithe fingers carded through Juno’s wet hair, he wished to stay in this moment forever. 

“You idiot,” Juno mumbled against his lips. 

They stayed like that for—well, Nureyev was unsure of how long it was, which was very unlike him. Eventually, they both had to breathe, but they stayed tangled together. He felt his own laugh bubble up inside of him from somewhere, “I take it this means you have something you’d like to confess?” 

“Yeah,” Juno adjusted Peter’s glasses from where they’d been knocked askew,  
I think you’re an idiot. How did you not know I liked you too?” 

“I’ll be honest, the thought hadn’t crossed my mind up until a few minutes ago.” 

Juno rolled his eyes, “Well, what do you think now?” 

Peter leaned in, “I think I should like to kiss you again.” 

“So do it,” Juno said, leaning in as well. 

And they did. 

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! 
> 
> i have so many more thoughts and headcanons about this au that i didn't get to explore in this fic (mostly about the other members of BASS but also some about juno and peter) so i might write more in this world! who knows! i love to live deliciously. 
> 
> as always, you can find me shouting about all things penumbra on [twitter](https://twitter.com/GHOSTZVNE) where i'm currently taking writing commissions. if there's ever been a penumbra fic you've wanted to pay me to write, now is your chance! 
> 
> comments and kudos make me so so happy and i would appreciate any you have to spare!


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